An embroidery on a conference by Paul Valéry ...

In 1936, Paul Valéry gave a lecture on Dance at the Université des Annales. He took the opportunity to pick up the reflection thread begun with Introduction à la méthode de Léonard de Vinci (1894) a youthful book that he nevertheless cared enough to publish again in 1919 with a new preface. This line of research, opened in 1894, and which aimed to elucidate the processes of intellectual creation, was more or less pursued in an underground way by Valéry throughout his life until the Cours de Poétique that he gave at the Collège de France from the end of 1937 until his death in 1945.

He comes to consider the process of artistic creation itself as the true work of art.

"All the arts are very varied forms of action and are analyzed in terms of action. [...] you can then conceive of the creation of a work of art, a work of painting and sculpture, as a work of art itself. The material object which is shaped under the fingers of the artist being then nothing more than the pretext, the stage accessory, the subject of the ballet." - Paul Valéry, Philosophie de la danse - P 38

But we will see that Valéry's thought leads us to conclusions of an even broader scope...